In a special series, IRIN examinesÂ health and development in Kenya. “The vast arid lands of northern Kenya are generally drier, less fertile, poorer and rank lower in most humanitarian and development league tables than the rest of the country. …Â Preventable and treatable diseases are often neither prevented nor treated…

Arab states must develop a plan to increase food security and create more jobs in order to meet Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets by 2015, according to a report published Sunday by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Reuters reports. “Though rich in labor and fertile land, much of the Arab world is plagued by malnutrition, joblessness and a big gap between rich and poor, said the report,” the news service writes.

BBC Examines Eritrea’s Response To Food Shortages BBC examines Eritrea’s decision to pass on international food aid in an effort to produce enough food for its population. According to Girma Asmerom, Eritrea’s ambassador to the EU, “foreign food aid demonises the local people and makes them lazy.” The government’s strategy…

Business Day Examines Business Of Feeding World’s Hungry In a Business Day opinion piece, analyst Shoshana Perrey examines U.S. food aid policy: “When the U.S. Congress passed Bill PL 480 in 1954, the American food aid regime was founded on four principles: find an outlet for the mounting tonnes of…

The U.S. ‘Must Continue To Have A Strong, AndÂ Effective International Affairs Budget’ Despite challenging economic times, “[t]wo areas we cannot afford to shortchange right now … are our national security and our economic prosperity, which is why we must continue to have a strong and effective International Affairs Budget,” U.S.…

Newborn Resuscitation Innovation Breeds Additional Innnovation: In a USAID “Impact” blog post, Lily Kak, USAID senior maternal and newborn health advisor, writes about the the Global Development Alliance, which represents a “new way of doing business in the field of newborn health and has now become a key USAID strategy…

Reuters examines food prices in Africa after the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization last week said its global Food Price Index hit a record high. “The United Nations may have sounded the alarm about soaring global food prices, but in Africa a string of bumper harvests and a changing diet means the political fallout may be more muted than to past price bumps,” the news service reports.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Wednesday “reported that last year’s corn and soybean crop was smaller than its earlier estimates,” Minnesota Public Radio reports. “As a result, prices for corn, soybeans and wheat are rising quickly, sparking concern about higher food prices” (Steil, 1/13).

World Economic Forum Global Risks Report Highlights Concerns Over Demand For Food, Water “Nations are in no position to deal with any more big shocks, the World Economic Forum said on Wednesday, yet risks are rising with the threat of ‘disastrous impacts,'” the organization noted in its Global Risks 2011…

A new report from the Worldwatch Institute, a research organization, recommends focusing on new approaches to address world hunger, Nature’s blog “The Great Beyond” reports. According to the report, “previous approaches to feeding the world’s population have ‘not really worked’ since around 925 million people globally still go hungry everyday,” the blog reports (Gilbert, 1/13). The State of the World 2011 report said, “[a]griculture as we know it today is in trouble,” Agence France-Presse writes, adding that it “said there had to be a revolution in investment in food and water to reverse a ‘frightening’ long-term depletion of stocks.”